1. UNIT III:
World Circa 1450-1750

2. Periodization
Age of Exploration
Start of Political Revolutions

3. Overall Themes
Absolutism – centralized government
Global Trade
Consumerism (3 S’s)
Rise of Europe
Coercive Labor
Religious Rivalry
Decline of Nomads

4. Circa 1300
• Population Decline and growth
• Black Plague (@1348)
• Feudalism in Japan (Kamakura) and Europe
• Yuan dynasty in China, Kievan Rus under
Mongol rule
• Rise of the Inca and Aztec empires
• Mali at its height

5. Circa 1300
• Delhi Sultanate in South Asia – rise of Islam,
decline of Buddhism, competing power bases.
• Founding of Ottoman Dynasty (1281)
• Continued decline of Byzantium
• Trade circuits in Mediterranean, Indian
Ocean, South China Sea, Trans-Saharan and
across the Eurasian steppe.

6. Think about it…
• Predict what trends will change and which
will stay the same.
• As the world continues to become more
integrated circa 1300, predict which societies
are in the best position to take advantage of
new technologies and new discoveries. Think
about virgin soils, location and luck.

7. Empires: Ming China 1368-1644
Manchu Qing Dynasty 1644 - 1912

8. MING CHINA
• Yuan (Mongols) out – Ming Dynasty proclaimed.
• Revival of Chinese culture
• Neo-Confucianism (strict social structure)
- Emperor - scholar-gentry - farmers - artisans - merchants
• Population Explosion
- agriculture (champa rice)
- public works (reforestation, irrigation)
• Chinese goods like paper, porcelain, and silks were in demand
throughout Asia and Europe. Europeans were allowed to come to
Macao and Canton to do business.
• Active traders in Indian Ocean (major ports were Hangzhou,
Quangzhou, and Guangzhou). Traded for silver with Europe and Japan.

9. Ming China and Absolutism
• Hongwu removed chief minister position
• Established a bureaucracy
• Developed Imperial City and the Forbidden City
• Killed rivals, ruled through terror (public beatings)
• Civil service exam (stopped family connections)
• Chose imperial wives from humble families
• Limited number of eunuchs
• Censored writings
• Continued subordination of youth to elders and women to men

10. Exploration and Decline
Emperor Yongle – eunuch Zheng He
- 7 voyages between 1405-1423, collect tribute
- Stopped: too costly, internal factionalism,
domestic concerns.
Decline –
poor leaders,
corrupt government,
public works fail,
foreign threats (Japanese ‘pirates’ and Manchus from North)
* Conquered by Manchus

11. Empires: Japan

12. Tokugawa Japan
Oda Nobunaga – started unification
Toyotomi Hideyoshi – continued and launched attacks on Korea
Tokugawa Ieyasu – 1600 – consolidated power, unified Japan,
became shogun
“Ieyasu ate the pie that Nobunaga made and
Hideyoshi baked.”

13. Tokugawa Japan
• Ieyasu created new capital at Edo.
• Did not continue Hideyoshi's overseas expansion plans
(Korea), but concentrated internally.
• Led bureaucracy and controlled daimyo
• Ensured Tokugawa succession
• Agriculture increased - improved farming techniques.
• Welcomed trade at first – muskets, gunpowder for Japan’s silver
• Closed Country Edicts - Restricted foreign trade
• feared foreign conquest
• Banned Christianity (threatened loyalty to the shogun)
• Banned Western books
• Only Dutch and Chinese could trade at Nagasaki
• Ensured rigid class structure (Neo-Confucianism)
ISOLATION for the next 250 years.

14. Empires: Ottoman 1281-1914
• 1350’s – Initial Ottoman Invasion
of Europe (Osman)
• Janissary Corps raised to be loyal
to Sultan
• 1453 – Ottoman capture of
Constantinople (Sultan Mehmid II)
• Suleiman the Magnificent
advances to Hungary and Austria
• 1683 – Failed Ottoman siege of
Vienna

15. Ottoman Empire
Led by Sultan
- absolute monarch, political and religious authority
Bureaucracy – vizier (real power), granted on merit
Janissary protected Christians and Jews (diverse empire)
Gunpowder civilization
Land empire
DECLINE –
Sultans neglect power
Vague process of succession
Empire too large
Corrupt officials
Lack of change in military technology

16. Empires: Mughal India
1526-1739
• Babur invaded and conquered Northern India
• Empire based on military strength
• Akbar – Religious tolerance. Attempt to combine beliefs into new
religion to unite Hindu and Muslim subjects: Din-I-Ilahi
• Indian textile trade – value to Europeans
• Patronage to the arts (Shah Jahan)
• Aurangzeb – No religious tolerance

17. Decline of Mughal Empire
 Corruption/neglect
 Army behind the times
 High taxes
 Lack of tolerance
 Peasant uprisings
 Foreign invaders

18. Rise of the West
Turned initial disadvantages into advantages

19. Age of Exploration
• European exploration
Why then?
Why?
Who and where?
• End of Ming Treasure / Tribute Voyages / Zheng He

20. Portugal

21. Empires: Portugal
• Search for Maritime route to Asia
• Advanced naval technology: caravels, carracks,
astrolabe and compass
• Established fortresses along the Gold Coast – sugar
plantations and African slave labor
• Indian Ocean trade and Da Gama: Malindi, Sofala
and Kilwa, Calicut and Goa, and later Macao
• Atlantic trade with conquest of Brazil – sugar
plantation

22. Brazil: Plantation colony
• Portuguese due to
Treaty of Tordesillas
1494
• African slave labor used
to support the
plantation complex
(sugar)
• Largest producer of
sugar in world first half
of 17th C.

23. Spain

24. Empires: Spain
• Reconquista ended with the fall of Granada
• Columbus’ voyage
• Arrival of Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru
• Took over existing tributary empires: labor
(mita), silver, gold, and foodstuffs
• Demographic impact: disease, death, and
mestizos

25. Empires: Dutch
• Dutch East India Company – In 1660, employed 12,000 people and
had 257 ships. Sought monopolies and large profits.
• North America (fur trade along the Hudson river, New Amsterdam)
• Caribbean islands for plantation settlements
• Capetown South Africa – way station
• Southeast Asia – spice trade (nutmeg in Banda islands, cloves in
Melaka and pepper in Banten)

26. Empires: France
• Absolute Monarchy - King Louis XIV
“ I am the State”
Palace of Versailles
• Mercantilism
• Territorial expansion in Europe and
fur-trading colonies in Saint Domingue
(Haiti) and New France (Quebec)

27. Empires: England
• Limited Monarchy and the
emergence of Constitutional
Monarchy
• Civil Wars: Commonwealth-
Charles II – James II and the
Glorious Revolution – Bill of
Rights
• Enlightenment Ideas
• Colonies in Americas

28. Iberian Peninsula vs. Northern Europe
- Catholic - Protestant
- Agricultural - Manufacturing
- For crown - For trading companies

29. Americas 1450-1750
• Conquest – arrival of Spanish in western
hemisphere
• Population impacts: disease, racial
intermingling (Castas system)
– Peninsulare, Creole, Mestizo, Mulatto,
African, Native American and Zambos
• Columbian exchange
• Colonial societies
• Encomienda System

30. Changes in Trade, Technology
and Global Interactions
• Exploration
• Gold, Glory and God?
• Empire Building
• Cartography
• Commodities

31. Commodities: Sugar, Silver and
Slaves
•

32. Commodities

33. Commodities
• Coffee beans used
first in Yemen and
then later in Europe
and the Americas
• European using
chocolate technology
from the Aztecs 17th
Century

34. Cartographic Changes

35. Empires: African
• Characteristics of:
Stateless societies - organized around kinship, often
larger than states, forms of government
Large centralized states – increased unity came from
linguistic base – Bantu, Christianity and Islam, as well as
indigenous beliefs
Trade – markets, international commerce, taxed trade of
unprocessed goods.

36. African Empires
Slave Trade – Europeans on coast with African middlemen
Slaves in exchange for firearms
• Benin – Eware the Great
• Kongo – King Afonso
• Asante – Osei Tutu
(Asantehene)
* Centralized kingdoms

37. East Africa – Indian Ocean Trade
-Swahili trading cities
-Zanzibar – clove plantations
- Trade with Ottomans – ivory, gold, silver, people

38. Empires: Russia
• Mongol occupation stalled Russian unification
and development
• Increasing absolutist rule and territorial
expansion by 16th Century – Ivan the Terrible
• Multicultural Empire
• Boyars, Cossacks, serfs
• Role of Russian Orthodox Church
• Peter the Great accelerated westernization
process

39. Changing Beliefs
• Protestant Reformation
• Neo-Confucianism
• Missionaries: Christianity, Islam,
Buddhism

40. Cultural and Intellectual
Development
• Scientific Revolution
• Enlightenment
• Patronage of the Arts

41. Comparisons
Be able to compare the following:
• Imperial systems: European monarchy vs. a
land-based Asian empire
• Coercive labor systems
• Empire building in Asia, Africa and Europe
• Russia’s interaction with the west compared
to others

42. Conclusions
• What are the major themes that seem
apparent?
• What global processes are in action?

43. Do You Know Your Stuff?
Using the regions below, explain how each exemplifies
the ‘Big Picture’ themes of the time period.
Ming China - Tokugawa Japan - Ottoman Empire -
Mughal Empire - Western Europe - Africa -
Americas - Russia
Absolutism
Global Trade
Consumerism (3 S’s)
Rise of Europe
Coercive Labor
Religious Rivalry
Decline of Nomads